


soldier on, achilles

by feuertatze



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 1920s Berlin, Canon Compliant, Coping with trauma, Death, Existentialism, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mentioned Quynh | Noriko, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, POV Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Post-World War I, Swearing, Unreliable Narrator, World War I, andy who still believes in people, canon-typical drowning (mentioned), canon-typical execution (mentioned), depressive episode (mentioned), field medicine, i guess, joe and nicky as anchors to each other, napoleonic wars (mentioned), the muddy reality of trench warfare, third battle of ypres (1917)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28364187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feuertatze/pseuds/feuertatze
Summary: "The tragedy of war feels like the blast wave of a grenade exploding, smells like the blood drying on an ancient scimitar blade, looks like carnage and mud and endless trenches and so, so little ground to battle for."Sebastien struggles with the inevitable tragedy of war.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	soldier on, achilles

**Author's Note:**

> title from "achilles come down" by gang of youths.

The tragedy of war feels like the blast wave of a grenade exploding, smells like the blood drying on an ancient scimitar blade, looks like carnage and mud and endless trenches and so, so little ground to battle for. 

It sounds like artillery firing and the desperate wailing of a fatally wounded soldier, barely a man, still a boy, really. 

It tastes like despair and the ever familiar tang of a rainy french autumn on Sebastien’s tongue.

He pulls his trench knife out of the lifeless body of the poor man who had the misfortune of sneaking up behind on him. Sebastien’s reflexes had kicked in before he really knew what was happening, sight blurred by exhaustion and rain and artillery barrage barely 40 feet in front of him, distracted by Andy’s shouts to his left. 

He can’t think about this now, he’s here to save those he can save. But it’s not enough, to save one man and then another and another, day after day. Still, it’s all he can do in the face of this war.

It had been a while since he had visited France before they came to this battleground. He’d hoped to visit Paris, see his grand old city, instead they have ended up in trench warfare in a field, with no hope of making a damn _dent_ into the violence and death. 

As he looks around, trying to locate Nicky or Joe somewhere in the chaos, Sebastien bites back the bitter thought of how _useless_ all of this is. They can die as many times as they want, each death more painful than the last, they will clearly accomplish _nothing_ . It’s 1917 and they have been trying to do good for _so long_. Nothing has stopped this bloodshed even in the slightest. There have been men he has pulled out of bomb craters who were dead the next day, pierced by a bayonet, frozen to death on a November night or torn apart by yet another grenade.

“Booker, get yourself over here!”, Andy yells from somewhere. 

Her commanding voice would be a lot more intimidating if he hadn’t died a deserter in the first place - and hadn’t spent the last 100 years bickering with her over dead languages and the best piece of food. As it is, he’s tired of battle, soaked through and bleeding from several cuts that have not yet healed, but he also knows Andromache. 

Knows her and a significant part of her past and knows why she’s doing this. Her unrelenting belief in humanity and the forces of good. Nicky might be the openly optimistic one of them, but at the end of the day, it’s Andy who keeps them going out again and saving the next boy who never deserved to be pulled into a war like this. 

When he reaches Andy, she is busy trying to pull out some poor soldier from under what has to be the last tree on the whole damn battlefield. The smell of sweat and blood is ever-increasing, her usually shining labrys is now crusted with mud, the combat medic band wrapped around her arm more brownish red than white. While he helps her push the fallen tree to the side, Sebastien thinks with a biting bitterness how this has to be one of history’s cruelest, most twisted metaphors - the eternal warriors trying to bring peace and carrying the marks of blood and death anyway, still. 

When they have finally freed the wounded man and carried him to the field hospital, Sebastien shivers. 

It’s getting dark and cold, another day of pointless death and suffering coming to an end. He isn’t keen on spending Winter nights out in the trenches, desperately huddling around a too-small fire, breath visible in the air in front of them. 

The cold always reminds him of 1812, that Russian winter, his subsequent first time dying. The snow had been falling gently, cold on his skin, muffling all sounds. 

The first time is always the worst, Joe had said when they first met him, Nicky quietly grasping at Joe's hand. If it can be avoided, Sebastien prefers to stay out of the trenches and at the hospital. He keeps smelling death and hearing screams and pained moans anyway, but it’s warmer at least. _Merde_ , does he hate this war.

He catches glimpses of Nicky wrapping a bullet wound and Joe bracing a bleeding man on his way to the medics and he warily gives a thumbs-up to them before hurrying to help where he can himself. 

He longs for Paris and home and safety and family.

God, he’s going to be so glad when this war is finally over. 

  
***

Berlin is a city tired of heroes. Sebastien can tell from the way people frown when they see old war propaganda and increase the speed of their steps when they see a veteran begging for some charity. 

When he looks in the mirror, he sees their tiredness in himself, in the creases on his face that shouldn’t even be there, the dullness behind his eyes. 

One Saturday, he sees Andy yank a single grey hair out of her braid and frown deeply. 

One Wednesday, Nicky lays on the couch and doesn’t get up for a whole week. Joe stays next to him when he’s not busy staring at Andy like this is all somehow her fault. Like Andy is responsible for people deciding to hate each other enough that they kill each other for it and then forget about the pain afterwards. 

Sebastien knows this isn’t Andy’s fault and Joe knows this. But when Nicky gets like this, he lashes out against everything that moves and Andy is an easy target. Andy knows this but Sebastien sees her hurt in the curve of her eyebrows and the clenching of her jaw nonetheless.

One Sunday, Joe tears out page after page after page out of his sketchbook, crumpling up quick impressions of cloudy battlefields, outlines of a mud-stained tank, careful details of Nicky’s sleeping face between bloody cloth pieces and fresh gauze bandages. Sebastien stands leaned against the doorframe as Joe very carefully holds a candle to each of the pages until all that is left is ash and smoke and another set of memories.

One Monday, Sebastien goes out for a drink and doesn’t come back until Thursday.

It isn’t their first war. Andy has forgotten more battles she was a part of than history can remember, on horse and foot and ships. 

Nicky and Joe burned and hated and died and died again (and finally loved) during a war that filled churches and mosques and streets with blood. 

Sebastien died trying to escape yet another war that laid the foundation for so many more since. 

As Sebastien stirs his sixth drink of the night, cursing their healing that never lets the alcohol have its full effect, he briefly muses about how wars tend to have that effect on them - that crash. The slow unravelling, a coming undone of carefully woven threads, walls they put up starting to crumble until all that is left is a pile of hearts and faces and too many memories for a person. Staring at the ceiling, listening to screams echoing in their heads. A never slowing heartbeat. Not sleeping for four days until they fall asleep against hard plaster in an alleyway behind a club. He throws his drink back and steps back onto the dance floor of the nightclub.

Eventually, they each recover in different ways, coming back to civilian life. They always do. Nicky bakes, Joe gets new paints and tries his hand at expressionism, Andy reads and goes on morning runs through the city that’s slowly waking up from a daze of endings and beginnings. They show a rediscovered belief in the fundamental goodness of people. It’s hard to understand for outsiders, their kindness mixed with their inherent sarcasm and, in Andy's case, cynicism. Sebastien didn’t understand it for a while, why they can fight in so many wars and still believe in goodness. 

Now he understands why, even as he recognizes the moments when Andy is doubting and angry at everyone. 

It’s because they have no other option. After millennia of lifetimes, you have to be kind or you’ll go goddamn insane. They know. They all dream of the same woman trapped in a metal box at the bottom of an ocean, scared and always dying and so full of loathing for the world.

Sebastien copes too, though perhaps worse than the others. Maybe it’s because he’s younger than them, still. Hasn’t lived a full millennia yet. Still remembers his family and his children and the revulsion in their eyes as they understood what he was. 

Sometimes, there is nothing more he wants to do than to go _home_ . Visit his City of Light, catch up with food developments, see the Seine and Paris’ parks and even that godforsaken tower they’ve built in the middle of it and for _some reason_ never torn down. 

Visit the graves of his family to be with them even if he can’t touch them like he still so desperately longs to do on some days. 

He still realises the significance of death where Andy and Nicky and Joe might not. He can’t fully shake the brutality, the uselessness, the smell of hatred and death. 

It takes longer than three lifetimes to accept the tragedy of war, Sebastien thinks, as he startles awake from another nightmare. A nightmare of being back on that field in the Russian cold or back in the muddy trenches in the French countryside, always terrified and lonely. Of standing by helplessly while people fall around him, a chilly breeze carrying the smell of hot cider and a warming fireplace - though that might just be an apple tree that grew next to the battlefield burning down, yet another casualty of war.

**Author's Note:**

> pretty nervous about sharing this one, since i don't usually do this heavy violence, but i hope someone liked it!  
> booker is a fantastic character to explore, but i haven't read the comics, so i apologize for any inconsistencies.
> 
> thanks as usual to awip for hyping me up and to my best friend for letting me nonsensically ramble on about the old guard for months now.
> 
> kudos and comments are appreciated!  
> find me on tumblr @elgoeshollywood.


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